A forklift is used in raising, lowering or transporting cargos of heavyweight nature. Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown a conventional forklift of the type including a vehicle body 1 and a mast assembly 3 attached to a front portion of the vehicle body 1.
The mast assembly 3 includes a carriage 5 moving up and down along a frontal surface thereof and a pair of forks 5a extending forwards from the carriage 5. Hinge pins 3a protrude laterally outwardly from opposite side surfaces of the mast assembly 3. The hinge pins 3a are received in reception grooves 1a of the vehicle body 1 and then held in place by virtue of caps 1b mating with the reception grooves 1a, whereby the mast assembly 3 becomes tiltable with respect to the vehicle body 1.
Support brackets 7 are attached to opposite bottom side portions of the mast assembly 3 in a vertical orientation, and axle shafts 7a extend laterally outwardly from the support brackets 7 in a horizontal direction. Provided on the axle shafts 7a are front wheels 8 and brake devices (not shown) for holding the front wheels 8 against movement.
In the prior art forklift noted above, spaces for accommodating the brake devices, i.e., spaces left between the axle shafts 7a and the front wheels 8, are quite narrow. For this reason, shoe brakes requiring no wide installation space have been used as the brake devices.
However, the mast assembly 3 that employs shoe brakes as the brake devices for applying brake to the front wheels 8 suffers from reduction in braking performance. In other words, the forklift requires enhanced braking performance inasmuch as the vehicle body and the cargos handled by the forklift are intrinsically heavyweight. Notwithstanding such a requirement, the shoe brakes employed in the prior art forklift shows poor braking performance, which in turn may cause a safety problem.
Another drawback of the conventionally used shoe brakes resides in that, for replacement of worn-out brake shoes or for repair of internal parts, the brake devices need to be dismantled in their entirety after detaching and removing the front wheels 8 from the axle shafts 7a one by one. This may prolong maintenance time and impair maintainability.